The Answer
by Ombre Rose
Summary: "Do you remember when I asked you to marry me? Do you remember what you said? You said 'With all my heart'. That was what you said, Guinevere. There was no subterfuge, no trickery." The scene between Arthur and Gwen from Season 5, Episode 9. With an extender.


**Author's Note: **_I played and replayed this scene almost a hundred times on Youtube, and while admittedly I did enjoy the great visuals and the music, it was still way too dis-satisfactory for me. First of all, everything felt entirely too rushed, and second, where was that kiss!? Seriously, no kiss at a completely kiss-worthy scene?!_

_I've had it with the way Season 5 of Merlin is becoming so utterly disappointing, that I decided to turn to fanfiction to satisfy the hopeless romantic in me and spin my own my lyrical version of one of my favourite Arwen scenes, with some minor changes plus an extender. Woots. So please enjoy and let me know what you think with a review. :)_

* * *

**The Answer  
**By Ombre Rose

* * *

It took their party of four a little less than a three days' ride to get to the Cauldron. They would have taken longer if they weren't moving in urgency. For Gaius had warned that the potion administered to Gwen was not to be taken for any extended period of time, and Arthur Pendragon was not about to take any chances, especially not at the expense of the woman he loved.

As the Sorceress Dolma chanted the spell that would eventually awake his sleeping queen, he found himself holding his breath in anticipation. He knelt at her side, watching, waiting… for any possible sign of life to stir in her.

In that moment's wait, she remained still as stone, and he wondered worriedly if the spell was even going to work. But her eyelids began to flutter open, slowly revealing a pair of brown eyes he missed gazing into these past few days. Yet, the same warmth and kindness that usually beheld them seemed to have dissipated into thin air, leaving them now cold and bitter like a winter sky after sunset.

In a sudden movement, she snapped herself upright, her frantic eyes urgently taking a scan of her surroundings. There was a formless dread in them as the realization set in that wherever she had been taken to was nowhere near the kingdom of Camelot.

In fact, she was really, _really_ far from home.

"Where am I? What have you done to me?" she demanded, eyeing him with frosty accusation.

Despite the reproachful glare she was giving him, Arthur willed himself to work out a small reassuring smile. "You've been asleep for a long time," he explained. "We brought you here because you were enchanted by Morgana, but we're going to help you now, and break you out of her spell."

A glassy stare of deprecating horror came upon her face. Troubled by what they were planning to do with her, Gwen fought down the numbness that plagued her body and quickly scrambled to her feet. She barely made three steps away before a firm hand gripped her arm and pulled her back, preventing her hurried escape.

"Guinevere!"

"Get away from me!"

"My Guinevere, listen to me," Arthur began in urgent, his voice coming out as a soft plea.

She snapped vicious eyes to his imploring face. "Your Guinevere!?" She almost laughed, her speech dripped heavily in mockery. "You stupid, foolish man. I was never yours, and never will be."

Arthur paused, stunned and disbelieving. An iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart formed inside him, leaving in its wake a glacial pang of pain like the stab of a dagger of ice frozen from a poisoned well. "You don't mean that."

Her mouth curled cruelly into a hard smile. "Oh, but I do."

"This is not the Guinevere you know, Arthur," the young king heard the recluse sorceress said. "The magic that binds her is very powerful. You must reach her. Reach out to all that's lost."

Frowning perplexedly at the interruption, she looked behind him to the 'woman' who had spoken with contempt. "Who is this old crone?"

"Guinevere." Arthur's voice syllabled her name in a cautious murmur. "Listen to me. You loved me once."

There was a tremor of supercilious scorn and something akin to pity on her once smiling face. "You are easily fooled, Arthur."

"And still do," he carried on, ignoring her attempt to break him.

"It was a trick, nothing more. A subterfuge to pass Camelot to its rightful queen."

"I don't believe that."

"Believe what you like, but the fact remains," she tossed disdainfully off her ardent lips.

He was failing, and couldn't fathom why. Fleetingly, he questioned if he was a fool to believe that sorcery could bring her back. With his will running thin and his heart sick with the thought of losing her completely to black magic, Arthur threw all caution to the wind and began tugging her with him in a feeble attempt to force her into entering the Cauldron, seemingly paying no heed to the Dolma's earlier instruction on how the spell must be broken.

"No!" the sorceress protested against his actions. "Remember, it must be of her own will."

At that, Arthur turned around and their eyes met glancingly. _How?_ His eyes seemed to ask. For with every insult Gwen threw in his face, every word of scorn that flew uncaringly out of her mouth, felt as if the kind and loving queen he knew and loved more than life itself, was slowly but surely slipping away from him.

Throwing a ton's weight of resolve upon his muscles, he pulled her up short, startling her slightly. Her face was now so close to his he could feel her warm breath upon his cheek like a perfumed air.

"Look at me! Look at me, and tell me you don't love me."

"Let me go!" came her fiery exclamation of wrath and disdain.

"Arthur…" It was the Dolma again, not missing the unspoken warning in her tone. Time was running short for all of them, and whatever that needed to be done had to be done now, or Morgana wins. And his Guinevere would be lost to him. Forever.

_Damn it!_ The young king felt himself drawing near to a desperate resolve. Aghast at his own helplessness, he spurred and whipped his frantic mind into action. _Think!_ What part of Gwen could possibly remain untouched by Morgana's magic? Perhaps a memory of some former happiness? Something that was previously passed between them, that is theirs alone and no one else's?

His mind froze at the thought. And then it came to him, the remembrance and emotion surging in his soul like a tempest.

Looking down at her, Arthur met her incisive stare with his own. The gesture was all strength and will, like the stretching of a sea-bird's wings. Reaching out towards the deep recesses of her mind, he called to her through one distant memory, a memory he knew both of them would forever hold close to their hearts.

"Do you remember when I asked you to marry me? Do you remember what you said?"

Her only response was a quizzical frown, and he took his cue to continue. "You said '_With all my heart_'. That was what you said, Guinevere. There was no subterfuge, no trickery."

She stilled.

Like a crooning of the wind came a sound of tranquillity. The silence, now brooding, was a gentle spirit over the cliffs that engulfed them. And in Gwen's large luminous eyes, Arthur finally saw something eminently _human _beaconed from them, something that had seemed to seize her upon her very soul.

"With all my heart," he murmured, his voice full of majestic tenderness. There was a flash of the same loveliness he recognized in his sweet Guinevere, she being the sweetest of natures, and any buried hope in him was starting to rise from their sepulchres.

With a deliberate gentleness, Arthur released his steady grip on her arms. He took a step back, then another, and another. His eyes, now full of unconquerable promise, never left hers as he edged himself closer to the riverbank behind him.

"With all my heart…"

Lights and shadows of a reviving memory seemed to cross her face, and a tear like sliver glistened in the corner of her eye. Then, as though the tumult in her conflicted mind had found sudden speech, the words came out of her lips as a half-breathless murmur. Soft, soothing and gentle.

"With all my heart…"

Hope, sheer and exuberant, rioted in his dazzling blue eyes, and his whole soul wavered and shook like a wind-swept leaf. He lifted a gloved hand to her now, beckoning. With eyes half veiled by slumberous and unshed tears, she started forward hesitantly. A gusty breeze blew her hair about unheeded. But even as she stepped towards him, he saw her tensed with the anguish of the magical struggle that refused to release its hold on her.

"Come," he encouraged, allowing the reassurance in his voice to softly bade her over to him.

Her hand, small and prehensible, eventually slipped into his gloved one. With a small smile, he gave it a firm and comforting squeeze. _I've got you_, he seemed to tell her. And ever so gently, Arthur led her into the Cauldron, until the skirts of her dark blue gown ruffled the brooding stillness of the water at her feet.

The gray air rang and rippled with the sound of the Dolma's magical chant like music. And as the last of her spell was casted, everything suddenly seemed to burst like a pent-up flood.

A great ring of pure and endless light rose around the queen, the Cauldron appearing to swell like an undulating mirror of the bowl of heaven. Within its golden haze in which she stood waist deep in the waters, Gwen was as ethereal as the light of a solitary star.

Arthur held his breath in admiring silence, believing that he had never seen anything more beautiful in his entire existence. She was a vision for angels to weep over, the sight of her like a wild rose in the fields of paradise.

Like some momentary vision, the lights which engulfed her earlier slowly began to fade away. And for a moment there was only the sound of the river singing with its lips to the pebbles. Gwen turned around to him, her eyes, glimmering star-like in her face met his. Wordlessly, she stretched a delicate hand to him and tearfully smiled, softly filling the silence like a speech.

Arthur's breath shuddered out with pure unadulterated joy. He drifted into the water and into her waiting arms, catching her in a tight embrace. He clung to her, as he would for dear life. Tears of happiness blurred his vision, and he shut his eyes to their struggle for an outlet, losing himself completely in her.

Her slender arms circled him and held on. With her face buried into his warm neck, Gwen stifled a sob of absolute despair. "I'm sorry. I'm _so_ sorry…"

"Sshh… It's alright," Arthur whispered. His hold on her tightened if that were even possible, and he nuzzled her hair with his nose. "It's alright." Pulling back slightly, he framed her face with one hand, and beyond the guilt for all the wrong she had done under Morgana's spell, he saw –at last– what he needed to see in her eyes. Love. All the love in the whole of Albion.

Lost, he dipped his head to hers and kissed her long and warm and tender. It was beyond him to stop the flood of emotion. It gushed through him, into the kiss, hot, strong, and turbulent – and through her, he knew, as he felt her body trembled against his.

Reluctantly, he broke the contact and rested his brow to hers in a gesture that was amazingly tender. "I love you, Guinevere." His eyes, like bluest water seen through mists of rain bore into hers. "I love you, as I've loved nothing else."

Gwen couldn't stop the tears from falling. She simply sank into him, and the two people who watched on - the Dolma and Mordred, couldn't help but smile as the queen of Camelot kissed her beloved for the second time in the clear sunlight.


End file.
